Rich Fiscus
28 Sep 2011 20:26
With bids for online video service Hulu in, it looks like the competition is coming down to three options, and the leading contender may be no sale at all.
If the sale does happen, the two leading buyers appear to be Dish Network and Google.
According to Business Insider, Google offered $4 bilion with the condition Hulu's current corporate parents would guarantee the current content deals for several years. Dish offered just $1.9 billion, but without the additional demands.
Hulu's owners, which include News Corp and Disney, reportedly want to renegotiate licensing terms after two years. A third owner, Comcast, was forced to give up control of the company as part of their deal to buy Hulu co-founder NBC.
It remains to be seen if any deal can be reached which would satisfy News Corp and Disney. News Corp's Fox Network has already begun delaying the availability of their shows on Hulu by two weeks.
News Corp has also indicated they may not be interested in selling.
Hulu, which started as a good idea to turn the existing popularity of free content into revenue, seems headed down the same road as other services from content providers. If they follow the standard model, the owners' failure to adapt to the Internet will eventually run Hulu into the ground.
Until they face the reality that the Internet can't be controlled in the same way as previous technologies like TV, they are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.